Transcript ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT & INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

What role do international
organizations play in
promoting democracy?
READING ASSIGNMENT:
Pevehouse, Jon C. 2002. Democracy from the OutsideIn? International Organizations and Democratization.
International Organization 56:3:515-549.
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Plan
• Democratic peace
• What causes democracy?
– Economic explanation
– Effect of Regional Organizations
– Other stories
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The effect of IOs on
democracy….
• Obviously intrinsically important for a class
on IO’s
• And it’s also part of a larger theme…
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The Democratic Peace
Democracy
Reading
from this
class
War
Peace
International Trade
International Organizations
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What causes democracy?
Analytical tool time…
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Today is really about what causes
democracy…
• One of the strongest correlates of democracy:
– PER CAPITA INCOME (economic development)…
• Why?
• Puzzle time!
• Explain the correlation between development
(per cap income) and democracy.
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HINTS
• Development does NOT cause democracy to emerge.
• Democracy does NOT cause development.
• The correlation is NOT spurious.
– (There is a causal connection.)
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• One of the strongest correlates of democracy:
– PER CAPITA INCOME (economic development)…
• Why?
– Democracy causes development?
• Mixed evidence (seems to change every decade)
– Spurious?
• Maybe… yet there does seem to be a causal connection
– Development causes democracy to EMERGE?
• Evidence is weak
– Development causes democracy to SURVIVE!
• One of the strongest findings in comparative politics
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Think DYNAMICALLY
• Don’t just look at correlations
• Consider
– Onset
– Continuation
• In this article we consider onset/emergence
– In other work, Pevehouse addresses continuation/survival
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Basic Stata commands
• regress y x
• regress y x if ylag==0
– Pevehouse, Jon C. 2002. Democracy from the Outside-In? International
Organizations and Democratization. International Organization 56:3:515-549.
• regress y x if ylag==1
– Pevehouse, Jon C. 2002. With a Little Help from My Friends? Regional
Organizations and the Consolidation of Democracy. American Journal of Political
Science 46 (3): 611-626.
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How can regional organizations
cause transitions to democracy?
Summary
I. Diplomatic & economic pressure
II. Acquiescence of anti-democracy elites
1. hands-tying
2. socialization (norms)
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(I) How do IO's provide diplomatic &
economic pressure?
1. highly visible
2. multi-lateral legitimacy (not “unilateralism”)
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Example: The OAS & Guatemala
• Auto-golpe of Jorge Serrano in Guatemala
(1993)
– dissolved legislature, closed courts, ruled by decree
• OAS – protested & proposed sanctions
• 5 days later, military ousted Serrano,
installing civilian rule
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Honduras and Zelaya (2009)?
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(II) How do IO’s get elites to acquiesce?
• Hands-tying
– The problem to solve:
• Business elites - fear expropriation under a populist leader
– How regional organizations solve the problem:
• Economic IO's may make credible the commitment to
preserve property rights
• Socialization
– The problem to solve:
• Military elites - fear subjugation & reprisals
Temptation to
 expropriate
Populist
leader 
– How regional organizations solve the problem:
• Joint-training exercises bring officers of all countries together
• Re-orient military officers away from politics (re-socialize)
Regional
organizations!
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Why the focus on Regional IO's
(not global)?
• Small numbers & higher levels of
interaction than global organizations
• Causal processes are more likely in
regional organizations
– Socialization
– Hands-tying
– Monitoring
– Enforcement
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The measure (independent variable)
• “democratic density” of a country's most
democratic organization
• “IOScore_it-1”: the score of the mostdemocratic IO of which state i is a member
in the year t-1.
– The “democraticness” of the IO is measured
as the average democracy-score of all
members (except state i).
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Evidence
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A simple guide to
How to read basic “regression” results
1.
What is the analysis “explaining”?
Dependent variable, usually in the title of the table
2.
What is the unit of analysis?
How many observations… of what? (In IO studies, often “country-years”)
3.
What are the independent variables of interest?
Main independent variable(s), Control variables
4.
What is the effect of each independent (explanatory) variable?
Just ask: Is the “coefficient” positive/negative?
5.
Are the effects statistically significant?
a.
b.
c.
d.
Star-gazing *, **, ***
Is the standard error <1/2 the size of the coefficient?
OR: is the t-stat/z-stat >1.96?
OR: is the p-value<0.05?
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Here’s a finding that’s statistically
significant in the first model, but NOT
ROBUST across the other models.
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More meaningful…
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TAKE HOME 1: How to read basic “regression” results
(not on the exam )
1.
What is it “explaining” (dependent variable, usually in the title of the
table)?
2.
What is the unit of analysis (how many observations… of what)?
3.
What are the independent variables?
4.
What is the effect of each independent (explanatory) variable? (Is the
“coefficient” positive/negative?)
5.
Are the effects statistically significant?
a.
Is the standard error <1/2 the size of the coefficient?
b.
OR: is the t-stat/z-stat >1.96?
c.
OR: is the p-value<0.05?
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Main take-homes
• Triangulating the democratic peace
• THINKING DYNAMICALLY
 Distinguish between “onset” and “duration”
 ONSET: why something EMERGES
 DURATION: why it SURVIVES
• Hands-tying/commitment
• Membership in regional IO’s that are highly
democratic may help democracy to emerge
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Thank you
WE ARE GLOBAL GEORGETOWN!
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How robust?
• There are many stories of democracy
• Empirical implications  many variables that purportedly
explain democracy
• Little consensus – different projects use different
specifications
• We apply EBA – 59 proposed factors (1.7 + 1.4 million
regressions)
• EBA is a high standard; variables that fail may matter
• Some variables, however, do survive. We suggest that
these variables may be the most important factors
determining democracy.
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Different stories of democracy:
• Culturalist
• Economic (emergence vs. survival)
• Game theoretic: Credible promise/threat
& income distribution
• Regional Diffusion
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Culturalist
• The Civic Culture (Almond & Verba 1963)
• Cross-national evidence (Inglehart 1988)
– Democracy associated with high levels of interpersonal
TRUST
• Seligson (2002) shows these correlations are spurious
– They disappear when PER CAPITA INCOME is
controlled for...
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Democracy
% of pop. saying “most people can be trusted.”
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$6,000
$5,000
$4,000
Democracy
$3,000
$2,000
$1,000
% of pop. saying “most people can be trusted.”
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Modernization theory
• Dates back to Lipset (1959) – Correlation between
economic development & democracy
• Common interpretation: Development  Democracy
• But the DYNAMICS of regime transitions are ignored!
– Przeworksi & Limongi (1997) – Modernization: Theories
and Facts
– Przeworski, Alvarez, Cheibub & Limongi (2000) –
Democracy and Development
• This study is concerned with economic growth –
drops oil rich countries
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Credible threat & income distribution
(Ross 2001, Rosendorff 2001, Boix 2003, Jensen and Wantchekon 2004,
Acemoglu & Robinson 2006)
• Democracy an elite-question:
– Costs of repression (autocracy)
– vs. Costs of income redistribution (democracy)
• Income distribution obviously matters (higher
income inequality makes repression more
attract)
• Asset specificity –
– oil can’t come with you (Middle East, Nigeria)
– education can (India, South Africa)
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“That minority still controls the
police, the army, and the economy.
If we lose them, we cannot address
the other issues.”
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Diffusion – an international story
• All (international) politics is local (Gleditsch 2002)
– Neighborhood effects
• Pevehouse (2002) mechanism:
– Regional international organizations
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Data
• Przeworski et al. (2000) Democracy indicator:
– “Democracy is a system in which incumbents lose
elections.”
– Chief executive, legislature face “contested”
elections
– Ex ante uncertainty, Ex post irreversibility,
Repeatability
• Explanatory variables: In total we employ 59
previously suggested in the literature
• Central variable: GDP per capita (M vector)
– Measured in purchasing power parity 1995 US$
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Results
• The most striking of our findings is that
MOST of the variables suggested in the
literature do NOT survive EBA.
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Results – Emergence of Democracy
Transition from Autocracy to Democracy (robust variables)
• GDP/capita does not matter for emergence!
– GDP growth does matter but negative!!
• Past transitions (positive), OECD (positive),
Muslim share (negative), Fuel exports (negative)38
Final model – Do even these variables survive?
• On the right we exclude the countries coded as oil exporters by
Easterly and Sewadeh (2001)
• Past transitions, OECD member, and GDP growth survive, but
OECD marginal effect is not significant (the baseline probability of 39
a
democratic transition is only 2 percent)
Results – Survival of Democracy
“Transition” from Democracy to Democracy (robust variables)
• GDP/capita matters (positive)
• Executive is a former military leader (negative)
• Neighboring democracies (positive)
• Past transitions (negative)
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Final model – Do even these variables survive?
• Military leader is co-linear with past transitions
• GDP/capita, neighboring democracy, past transitions
survive, but “neighbor” marginal effect is not significant (the
baseline probability of a democratic survival is 98 percent)
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Note on theory
• Other variables may indeed matter in wellspecified models.
• But there is great disagreement on theory, and
we choose not to take sides in this project.
• Methodologically neutral approach gives stark
results.
• Few robust determinants of Democracy.
• Policy-makers may care most about these…
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Libya, Qaddaffi, & the Arab League?
• Note that by Pevehouse’s measure, the Arab League gets a low
score for the democracy of members
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